Hide and Seek

Aryn arrived on time to her babysitting appointment at the Charles house. The day had been exceedingly average until this point. The weather had been nice, a clear, warm day. School had been unremarkable, which suited Aryn fine. Predictable monotony was always preferable to locker room teasing or finding maxi-pads stuck to her desk. She expected the evening to be uneventful, too. While 6-year-olds are full of energy and sometimes surprises, Willow was an only child. Sitting for one kid generally meant a controlled kind of chaos.

She rang the doorbell and heard a giggle from the other side. About twelve second later, adult footsteps approached and the door swung open.

"Oh, Aryn!" Mrs. Charles greeted her in a loud voice that was intended for the hearing of the giggler. "How nice to see you! Come in!" She smiled and held a finger to her lips as she guided Aryn inside. They passed a coat rack holding several more coats than usual, and they didn't acknowledge the conspicuous pair of small, stockinged feet clearly visible underneath.

When they made it to the kitchen, she explained in a low voice, "We're into hiding this week. Try not to 'find' her until she's ready."

"How do you know when she's ready?" Aryn whispered.

The sound of running footsteps, trying and failing to be quiet, thudded down the hall. Mrs. Charles nodded in the direction of the sound with an amused smile. Aryn tried to look that way without turning her head.

Willow burst into the doorway all at once, making some noise between a "roar" and a "growl" with her hands up like velociraptor claws. Aryn jumped and tried to act surprised. Her, "oh no!" wouldn't have convinced an older child, but the reaction was enough for the kindergartener. The girl scampered away to hide again.

After the parents headed out, the two girls fell into a hide-and-seek rhythm. Aryn curled up in front of the TV with some schoolwork. She put on a YouTube channel that streamed episodes of "Bluey" around the clock. She kept the volume low and kept an ear out for footsteps and the sounds of moving furniture. When an episode of the cartoon ended, Aryn did a quick walkthrough of the house, making sure to end in the room where the last noise was heard. She made some exaggerated "searching" gestures and let out a loud "hmm" before turning to leave. That's when Willow burst out with a "boo!" before running to find a new place to hide.

Toward dinner time, Aryn heard the sound of the basement door slamming shut followed by footsteps jumping down the stairs. This happened just as one "Bluey" segment was ending, so she decided to give Willow another few minutes to finalize her hiding spot. Over the next ten minutes or so, Aryn focused on her homework a bit harder than intended. When she looked up, a different episode was playing than the one she remembered starting.

Aryn paused the TV and listened. The house was totally silent. She got up and started her "seeking," making her footsteps loud enough to be heard from the basement. She walked back and forth across the house a few times, then came to the basement door.

Something felt off; the silence was unsettling in some way it hadn't been with Willow's other hiding spots. Aryn wrapped her fingers around the doorknob and pulled. The door resisted a little, but it opened. Cool air wafting up the stairs gave Aryn goosebumps. The lights were off. Was Willow hiding in a pitch-black basement? Aryn flipped the switch and two lightbulbs flickered to life, one after the other.

She took a deep breath and started down the stairs. She supposed the anxiety settling in her mind was guilt. Aryn was the babysitter here. She shouldn't be letting a kid stumble around a dark basement. Maybe Willow didn't find her own basement frightening, but if there's anything in a house that's dangerous to a kid, it'll be in the kitchen or in the basement. Aryn didn't recall any sharp tools or chemicals within a child's reach, but she had only been down there a couple of times, ever. But there was no reason to panic yet. Just get to the bottom of the stairs first, then assess the situation.

Wait, why hadn't she reached the bottom yet?

Aryn froze and tightened her grip on the railing. Looking down, she could see the bottom of the stairs. It was still a ways down, as if she had just started the descent. Weird. Maybe that anxiety was messing with her sense of time or distance. She cleared her head and fixed her gaze on the floor as she quickly stomped toward it.

By her count, she had descended another ten stairs, but somehow the floor only seemed about a foot closer. Three more steps; no change. Aryn blinked and put both hands on the railing as she looked back over her shoulder. The door was still behind her, still open, hardly more than an arm's length away. She climbed back up and out the door.

There was nothing obviously wrong when she looked down the stairs again. They looked the same as they usually did: about twelve wooden stairs enclosed by claustrophobic concrete walls with a wooden railing to the right (which Aryn felt should have been sturdier every time she touched it) ending in another concrete wall, a dead end, from which she would turn right to enter the actual basement. A dusty bare lightbulb at the bottom feebly threw light as far up the stairs as it could. It was a perfectly normal basement staircase.

Aryn tried the stairs again and received the same result. She would reach the halfway point, or maybe a step or two beyond, and her progress would just halt. She touched the walls on either side to make sure they were real.

"Willow?" Aryn called out into the dim light. She couldn't see around the corner from this far up the stairs. "Willow? Are you down there?" No answer.

She ran back to the top of the stairs and started flipping the lights off and on, trying to get the girl's attention. "Willow, can you come here, please?" After a few flips of the switch, the two lightbulbs seemed to be struggling to keep up. It took an extra moment for each one to turn on, though they were perfectly happy to turn off in an instant.

"Where are you?" she shouted loud enough to echo. Still nothing.

Maybe she had been mistaken about the last sounds she heard. Willow might have chosen a different hiding place while Aryn was zoned in on her homework. Aryn ran through the house and checked every room. She looked under furniture, in closets, behind appliances -- anywhere a kid might be able to fit. There was no sign of her. Aryn was starting to panic.

She returned to the basement stairs and took a deep breath. Aryn put a hand on the railing and another on the opposite wall. She placed one foot on the first step. Then she screwed her eyes shut and ran. The friction of the railing burned her hand, but she didn't dare let go. Aryn felt her feet land on each step, but tried not to count them. She just ran until she smacked directly into that wall waiting at the bottom.

Aryn bounced off the wall and fell backwards with an "oof," landing hard on her behind. Looking up at the wall, she laughed as relief washed over her. Then she turned her head to face the rest of the basement.

As if on cue, the second lightbulb, the one lighting the main area, fizzled out. "Okay, sure," Aryn muttered as she caught her breath. The light over her head only reached about a third of the way to the back of the room. Rather than stumble around and risk tripping, she decided hands and knees would do the job.

She called out to Willow several more times as she felt her way around the basement floor. She strained her ears to pick up any sound that wasn't coming from herself. There wasn't any. She could hear the fabric of her jeans scraping across the hard floor; the tapping of her hands testing the area in front of her for safety; the dry swallow of her throat; but no Willow.

The crawl felt like it lasted an hour. Aryn would have told herself it was just the anxiety eating her sense of time again, but she was starting to have doubts. At long last, she found the far wall. She groped around the perimeter, feeling around shelves, exercise equipment, a table, until she found herself back within the reach of the light, dusty, and empty-handed.

"Willow, please." She felt desperate. "I can't find you, and I'm getting scared. So, you know, if you jump out at me right this minute, I really will scream."

Nothing.

Aryn dragged herself to her feet and began the climb back up the stairs. She stared directly at her feet and counted each step. By now, she wasn't even shocked when she got to 20. She kept going until 30. The door still looked a mile away. Aryn closed her eyes again and summoned the last of her energy to race back to the top. Her shock returned when she found herself bouncing off the wall and landing hard on her behind, again, at the bottom of the stairs.

How was this even possible? Aryn curled up in the corner and cried. She hyperventilated. Somewhere underneath the fear, she found anger that needed to vent. She allowed herself to scream, and it rang throughout the basement. Aryn listened to the echo die down and worked to steady her breathing. What else could she do? What sort of messed-up dream-logic did this staircase employ? Does running only work one way? Should she walk on her hands going up?

No, she didn't have the energy for something that athletic. Maybe more crawling? Aryn tried crawling up the stairs, even though her knees ached from the search of the basement. It didn't work.

She tried climbing the stairs very slowly and deliberately. It didn't work.

She took the stairs two at a time. Didn't work.

She tried walking backwards up the stairs, and -- the wall got further away. Aryn felt a second wind. She backed up another step. The wall continued to retreat. Another step, less wall. Another, and -- Aryn saw something.

It was as if she had walked through a ghost. Some semi-transparent thing was suspended in mid-air, like pausing a video during motion-blur. Aryn took another step back and nearly screamed again. It was Willow.

She continued to back herself up the stairs and watched, in slow-motion and in reverse, a startled Willow falling, after tripping, after running down the stairs. Aryn stopped when she and the image of Willow were on the same step, just before Willow tripped. She reached out and tried to touch her, just in case, but her hand went right through. She walked forward down a few stairs and watched the fall. Willow wasn't far from the bottom, and she may not have been badly hurt from the short fall, but where was she?

Back on the stair where Aryn first saw the blur, she looked around the wall into the basement. Her heart froze. The light was still out, but there was something there. Some thing. It was big and ill-defined -- just some mass of black darker than the absence of light around it. Aryn couldn't begin to guess what it was, but she was certain she saw light reflecting off of eyes in the dark. She felt sick to her stomach.

Aryn rushed backward up the stairs and tripped her way back into the main floor of the house. She scrambled to a bathroom and made it just in time to vomit. There was another round of panic, crying, breathing like it was her last chance to breathe.

When she was able to pull herself together, she made a decision. Willow was her responsibility, and she couldn't leave her down there alone. Aryn went to the garage for a bike helmet and some knee and elbow pads. She spotted a rake, and she took it. She swiped pillows from the bedrooms and tied them around her torso. She turned off the TV. She considered leaving a note, but she didn't know what to say. If they didn't come back... maybe the mystery would be kinder than the impossible truth.

Aryn returned to the basement door, ran down several steps, and leaped.